Cracks in my heart
by Lizardbeth J
Summary: When Clint starts behaving oddly, Natasha worries he may not be cured, after all, but it's something good for a change. BlackHawk fluff w/Tony, Steve, Jarvis.


Written for a Secret Santa gift exchange, now reposted here.

Established C/N relationship. With Steve, Tony and Jarvis.

* * *

Natasha looked at her phone, and her brows creased in worry. The call went directly to voicemail, something it only did when his phone was off, and Clint never turned it off when he wasn't on a mission.

She was waiting in the living room when he came through the door of the apartment and padded down the front hall, humming. He wasn't in his work armor, just a casual t-shirt and pants, suggesting he hadn't been doing anything mission-related. He gasped and flinched guiltily when he saw her by the window. "Nat! Good lord, what are you doing here?"

Which was an odd question when she lived here, at least when they weren't both at the tower. She figured he meant right now, when he'd expected her later. "Waiting for you. I tried to call you and your phone was off."

"It was?" He took it out of his pocket to find it dark. "I thought it had more charge than that. The battery's been weak; I need to change that. Let me put it on the charger."

She watched him go into the bedroom, frowning again. He let the battery run down? That was unlike Clint. And there'd been a strange false note to his voice that skittered down her spine in warning.

When he came back out, she smoothed her face and when he smiled at her, she couldn't help smiling back. "Hey, I'm glad you're here," he said, "even if you gave me a heart attack." His smile widened, teasing, "You're early. That means we have extra time before we have to get ready." He wiggled his eyebrows with overdone lasciviousness; she chuckled, amused.

He held out a hand and when she took it, he tugged her into his body. She went with only a little pretense of reluctance, before she had both hands sliding around his taut flanks and beneath his shirt to feel the warmth of his back. His mouth sought hers, and cell phones seemed unimportant.

The next day, the concerns returned when he left to fetch lunch and then didn't come back. She tried to text him, but got no answer, and calling him proved just as fruitless as before, because he'd left his phone at the apartment. When he returned an hour late with lunch, he was full of apologies he'd run into an old colleague and lost track of time reminiscing.

"Forgive me?" he asked, giving her that grin that he knew was nearly irresistible to her.

"Of course," she answered and plucked the bag of lunch away and set it on the counter. "But you can make it up to me."

They didn't make it to the bedroom.

But this time it didn't distract her completely. There was something going on with him. She went back to the Tower and sought out Steve.

He was of course, concerned. "He's acting weirdly?"

"He's hiding something. He disappears, his phone's off, but when he comes back, he seems normal," she answered, troubled by not quite knowing what was wrong with him. "I … worry that he's still compromised," she confessed.

"No, Natasha, surely SHIELD would've found -"

"Would they?" she retorted. "How would they know what to look for? If Loki left some trap in his mind, some subroutine to run in case his plot failed, how would SHIELD find it? Do they have a lot of experience with demigods from other planes of existence?" she demanded and clenched her fists.

"I think let's not borrow trouble," Steve started, "Maybe there's a perfectly acceptable explanation-"

Then Tony interrupted from the door, and she whirled, caught by surprise that he'd entered without her notice. "Maybe there is. But we'll watch him. I'll get you a tracker bug to put on him, and we'll see where he goes. And - " he held up a hand calling up the air-display and worked on it for a moment, "let's see where he's been."

She wanted to object at Tony taking such a high-handed presumption that his help was wanted, but she found herself drawn to the display, as it showed a map of Manhattan and a glowing trail that abruptly stopped and then picked up back at his apartment.

"Ah, he's clever," Tony murmured. "GPS triangulation stops for over an hour yesterday and the day before."

"He turned off his phone," she said, heavily. He hadn't left it at home by accident or because the battery had died, it had been deliberate. "So we don't know where he's been in the gap."

Tony rolled his eyes at her. "I said Barton was clever, but he's not a genius. Nor does he have JARVIS. Who I hope is anticipating my request to use other methods of tracing Barton's whereabouts while he was trying to be off the grid yesterday."

_"Of course, sir. Mister Barton is visible on street cameras throughout parts of Manhattan_."

When JARVIS stopped, Tony circled his hand. "Aaaaand…? I never programmed a melodramatic pause, JARVIS. Out with it."

"_I cannot say, sir. Mister Barton requested his exact whereabouts be kept confidential._"

Tony froze, dumbfounded. "Wait - are you saying - are you even for _one second_ suggesting that you can withhold information from _me_ - your maker - at someone else's request?"

Natasha hid a smile at his irate demand, even if she was more deeply worried by this evidence that Clint had been planning something long enough to set up a cover with JARVIS.

"_I am sorry, sir. But Mister Barton was most adamant that this was a private matter. I can assure you that was a truthful statement_."

"Oh, you can, can you? JARVIS, he's a spy, you can't tell if he's lying, or manipulated by Norse primadonnas with delusions of grandeur!"

"_I believe I can, sir,_" JARVIS returned, unperturbed. "_His words were not the only verification I received. And you did order me to keep the privacy of our residents protected._"

Tony harrumpfed loudly and turned to her, folding his arms. "Well, I clearly have some work to do tonight, stripping JARVIS for parts. But until I have it fixed, we'll watch Barton."

"Maybe JARVIS is right," Steve suggested. "Maybe it's a private matter and we should just leave him alone."

"Clint has no private matters," she declared with a decisive shake of her head. He had no family, and if there was something else, he would say something in explanation. "He's up to something, I know it."

"All right. We'll watch him," Steve reassured her. "He'll be fine, Natasha. I'm sure you're worried for nothing."

"I'm not worried," she denied, folding her arms. "Merely … concerned."

The other two exchanged a look, as if they wanted to contest that, but thought better of it. She realized she'd let her feelings run a little loose, and it was making her sloppy. She needed to lock that down and be more Black Widow, right now. Black Widow could evaluate and do what needed to be done; Natasha felt a little sick in her heart that she might not have Clint back, after all.

Black Widow decided to stick to him like glue, determined to stop him no matter what; Natasha watched him sleep and feathered a touch down his face, determined to get him back.

* * *

The next day Clint seemed weirdly nervous about something, glancing at her over coffee, smiling then biting his lip to try to hide it. He tapped his fingers and shook his leg, not managing more than a few bites of toast, before he stood up, unable to stay still.

She cornered him against the counter. "Clint? Is there something wrong?"

"Wrong? Nothing's wrong. Nothing at all," he protested. And he was telling the truth, as far she could tell, but she frowned.

"You're hiding something."

"It's a surprise," he told her and swiftly kissed her lips before shouldering her out of the way. She slipped the tracker onto the back of his coat as he passed. "I have some errands to run. But I'll see you in the Tower at noon, right?"

She followed him down to the street, but he hailed a taxi and by the time she caught one too, his was gone. She tapped her comm. "He got away."

"_He's proceeding south_," Tony reported, and then added, "_Ah, and there goes the phone. But the tracker you put on his jacket is working fine. Still heading south._"

With Tony's help she told her taxi driver where to go, eventually catching up so she could follow the other cab. After following it for two stops, she realized other people were getting in and out. She rushed out of hers and went to the other, yanking open the back door.

There, on the floor was the tracker. She scooped it up and held it in her fist. "Son of a bitch," she swore. He'd known.

She turned her eyes upward, wondering if he was somewhere, watching her with blank blue eyes again. "What the hell are you doing, Clint?"

Heading back to Stark Tower, she paced in the common room while Tony went out as Iron Man to look for Clint. The top-most floors were still a mess from Loki and the Chitauri, but this mid-level room still had a dramatic view of the city, and Tony had slid the panoramic windows aside to let in the breeze and warmth of the beautiful spring day. The Great American Bank tower was across the way, their executive offices at this level and their observation deck just above. It had taken surprisingly little damage in the fight and reflected the sunlight back into Stark Tower from its glass-and-metal façade.

Steve was with her, offering his support. "We'll sit him down when he comes back," he promised. "Make him tell us what's going on. If necessary, we can take him to the Helicarrier and get him checked out."

She nodded and folded her arms, trying not to think of the worst. But he had been so diligent about getting away from all surveillance to the point of compromising even JARVIS, it suggested something terrible was happening to him. He'd been acting so strangely the past few days - it was obvious in hindsight that he'd been so physically attentive to distract her.

Still, as long as he kept his promise to return to the Tower at noon, they'd find out what was going on with him soon.

"_On my way back_," Tony reported. "_If he's around, I don't see him."_

"Thank you for trying," she replied, remembering to be polite, when all she wanted to do was stand there in silence and make her face blank and not think of all the things Clint could be doing right now while he was off the grid.

Then Tony's alarmed voice cried a warning, _"He's here! Nat, duck! He's firing at you!"_

Reflexively she dropped as an arrow whistled through the open window and hit the floor near her. She glimpsed Clint standing on the observation deck of the bank building and Tony heading at him from behind. Then Steve fell on her, throwing himself across her protectively.

She struggled and flipped him off her, freeing herself. She rose to one knee just as Tony flew in, holding Clint under the arms then dropped him to the floor. Clint rolled, coming up and reaching reflexively for an arrow, exclaiming as he realized who'd done it, "Tony! What the hell?"

Voice muffled by the mask, Tony held out his repulsors in a definite hostile pose. "Put the weapon down, Barton. Now."

Clint looked at the bow, as if only then realizing he was holding it. His eyes then traveled to Natasha, Steve and Tony, and then fell to the arrow he'd shot. He lowered the bow and let it clatter to the floor, as his expression grew dismayed. "Oh man, this is all screwed up. I … wanted to do this in private."

"Shoot at her?" Steve demanded in outrage, climbing to his feet and would have tried to stand in front of her, but she moved to have a clear line of sight to Clint.

"I wasn't shooting at _her_!" Clint protested and his eyes returned to her in appeal. "Nat, look at it. Please."

The arrow had buried itself into the tile just enough to stand nearly vertical, its fletchings waving in the breeze. He was right, she realized. He hadn't been shooting at her - he'd been shooting to put it near her feet. When she looked more closely, there was something else attached to the arrow. It looked like a white ribbon tied to the shaft, and she knelt down to look at it.

Tied to the ribbon was a ring.

Her heart tripled its rhythm instantly and her fingers trembled slightly as she touched it to see if it was real. It was. Her eyes flew to Clint, wondering if it meant what she thought it meant. For her? Really?

"That's what I've been doing," he explained. "I wanted it to be a surprise. It wasn't supposed to happen quite like this though…" he added ruefully, glancing at Tony, who lowered his arms and flipped up the face plate as he realized there was no danger.

"Is that a _ring_?" Steve exclaimed in astonishment.

"This was your idea of a proposal?" Tony demanded, sounding appalled.

It was both. She drew the ribbon through her fingers, reading the words he'd written in ink on the ribbon: "marry me?" With a gentle tug on the ribbon, the ring fell into her hand. She curled her fingers around it.

_Marry_. For a moment the enormity of the word weighed on her, and it seemed impossible. A small voice in the back of her mind said that it was not for her - attachments were forbidden, attachments brought pain, commitments were foolish and love was a childish fairy tale.

But her gaze lifted from the arrow, seeing first Steve Rogers, who was watching her with hopeful eyes that believed in love, and then Tony, who was watching her with a half-smirk that suggested he knew how this was going to end. She'd watched him change from a hopeless narcissist into a man who believed in others because he'd realized love had been right in front of him the whole time. She was already attached to them both, as friends and colleagues.

And that was nothing to her attachment to Clint, who was always and forever the one who'd saved her, who brought her back, who knew who she was and loved her anyway. There was a debt and there was a partnership and it was tempting to keep it that way. But there was also curling up under the blankets and drinking cocoa while a Carpathian blizzard howled outside, and there was his grin and the way his eyes crinkled and how that made something flutter inside no matter how much she tried to stop it.

"You had JARVIS as your wingman, and not us?" Tony now sounded offended, still trying to draw attention. "Not cool, Barton. Not cool at all."

Clint ignored him, his eyes on her alone. He was very still and flushed, swallowing convulsively, nervous about this even though he was never nervous about anything.

She stood and Steve and Tony moved back as she approached Clint. "You are a reckless crazy idiot sometimes, and you need to make better plans that won't make me think you've been compromised by supervillains, but yes, Clint Barton. The answer is yes."

Clint's widening grin was both happy and relieved, and made her grin back at him. Then she wrapped her hands around his neck and pulled him to her. His arms wrapped her tightly and their mouths joined. She had feared she might feel trapped, but instead, she felt more free.

Distantly she heard Steve and Tony clapping and whistling, but she pretended they weren't there. She let herself stay in the moment, kissing Clint, his love evident in the touch of his lips and his hands, and she hoped hers was, too.

It was time to stop running and hiding, creeping through the shadows of what other people had. She was free to choose what had been denied: friends, family, love…

To live.

* * *

end.


End file.
